


Sad Boy. What's Wrong?

by delinquents



Series: Rory and Jess [1]
Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/M, Literati, Pre-Relationship, just jess being a sad boy honestly, mental health, this is the character development we should have seen in the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:28:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25889623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delinquents/pseuds/delinquents
Summary: Before Stars Hollow, there was New York.(the character backstory we should have seen in the show - Jess before Stars Hollow)
Relationships: Rory Gilmore & Jess Mariano, Rory Gilmore/Jess Mariano
Series: Rory and Jess [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1817590
Comments: 4
Kudos: 47





	Sad Boy. What's Wrong?

**Author's Note:**

> this is PART 1 of the series.
> 
> if you guys have read my other Literati works (['Lovely Things'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24965098/chapters/60433969) & ['To Say About You'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25147498/chapters/60933196)) you might notice some small details in here that are mentioned in the other fics. they didn't happen on the show (that i can tell you of) but because the other fics were 'fix it' works I've slid them in here. The other fics will be tagged in the series above or just click the links in this paragraph if you want to check them out :)

The sunset that night, before he was supposed to be on a bus to Stars Hollow, was dull and a little disappointing, but Jess is pretty sure he'd been smoking for too long and the cigarette smog had just been floating in his eyes. Liz has been banging on his locked door for some time now in a futile attempt to get him to talk to her, but they haven't _talked_ in years and he's not about to start mere hours before she ships him off so someone else can deal with him.

It's her fault he's like this and he hates knowing that. He'd love to chalk it up to it him because despite not having that relationship with his mother he's craved for, he still finds excuses to blame anyone else but her. When the water would get turned off because Liz couldn't pay the bill, it was her boss's fault for not giving her enough shifts. When the food turned stale in the cupboards it was the store's fault for selling food too close to the cut off date. When Jess's teachers called CPS because Jess hadn't had a decent wash or change of clothes in a few days, it was the teacher's fault for butting in and CPS's fault for making Liz feel inadequate.

Except for this. For this, _him_ , he can't find an excuse. He can't talk to people because Liz never wanted to talk when he was little because every serious conversation got swept under the rug without a second thought. He can't let people in because Liz continuously disappoints and he doesn't want to add more names to that list. It's Liz's fault because she found solace in drugs and alcohol before he was born and hasn't let her grip loosen on it since. It's her fault because she brought him into this world and didn't change. It's her fault because he was four the first time he had to wash the vomit from her clothes and mouth, and he was thirteen when he stopped because Liz never did the same for him when he was ill. 

CPS used to say she was 'on the cusp of becoming unfit for motherhood', a direct quote he'd heard more times than necessary for a child - a direct quote he never agreed with. Liz was _already_ unfit for motherhood.

He'd known that for ages, and it made him irrationally angry in the moments where things got bad. _How was he the only one that saw that?_

* * *

The first time he remembers knowing Liz was high was when he was three years old. Looking back it's safe to say it definitely wasn't the first time she got high around him, but it's the earliest memory he has of it and the naive little boy still banging around inside of him is desperately clinging to the notion that she was a competent mother at some point. 

At the time, he thought they moved apartments a lot because they were bad apartments. He learned, as he grew older, that they were bad apartments _because_ they moved around a lot and it's all they could afford. She was paranoid at the beginning, that someone was following them and that they needed to keep moving; a doctor changed her sleeping pills after a run-in with the cops and she calmed down about it, but the consistent paranoia was still there, just without reason. They'd moved that time because CPS kept dropping by and Liz wanted just a week or so without them.

It was the first apartment where Jess had his own bedroom. He had loved it. He had four walls and a ceiling and a window all to _himself_ and it didn't matter that all that was in there was a mattress with his blanket he dragged around. This was _Jess's room_ and _Jess's room_ was _brilliant_. He was still calling her 'mom' at this point, spent the entire evening delighted; 'Mom! _My_ room has-' 'Mom! In _my_ room-' 'Mom! I want to paint _my_ room with-'; and she promised him all kinds of things for it. They'd paint it green because it was his favorite color of the week, he'd get a bed with a ladder because they saw it in a commercial at the diner they got food from that one time and he'd been obsessed with them ever since, they'll get a small bookshelf because one of the men his mom keeps bringing around gave him _Curious George_ and he wants _even more books because books are great, Mom!_. 

Jess had learned how to write his name by asking a waitress to write it on a napkin that he kept in his pocket. He traced it every night before bed, managed to write it neatly in the cover of _Curious George_ by himself with a pencil he found at the bottom of his mom's handbag. The man who gave him the book wrote _1987_ next to his name because that's the year he got it but his handwriting was shaky and made the page look scruffy. Jess rubbed it out, careful not to rip the pages, wrote it again with his tongue poking out from his lips in concentration.

That man was gone a week later, and another one was in his place at the table with a small bottle of pills in his hands quickly enough. 

CPS dragged Jess out of that apartment pretty quickly after that. His mom had to be in the hospital for the night for some tests, but Jess got to have a sleepover with a nice family who took children in for a night or two when their parents were poorly, they had said to him. The mom was nice enough, but she wasn't _his_ mom. It didn't matter, _his_ mom didn't read _Curious George_ to him before bed. This mom did. She put on different voices for different characters and kissed Jess's forehead when he was just about to fall asleep. He went back to that family four times in the next two weeks. The kids were different some times, but the teenage girl was always the same. Together, both of them taught Jess how to properly say his last name, told him it's probably Italian, taught him to spell it too and they watched as he carefully wrote it down underneath the name and date already in his book.

The last time he went there, the mom gave him some new trousers because his had ripped at the inner thighs and were permanently dirty. Every time he had visited he had slept in the same room - _it was painted green! -_ and they started calling it 'his' room, and it was great because now he had _two_ rooms and this one had a bookshelf and the bed didn't have a ladder but it didn't matter. They didn't know it would be the last visit, neither did he. 

His mom got permission to move apartments, but she didn't go to the approved one. The next time he had to have a sleepover at someone else's house, it was a family who got him up early to go to church and scolded him for having dirt behind his ears.

The new apartment was smaller than before and he and his mom shared a sofa bed that was lumpy and had stains on the mattress. _"That's okay,"_ His mom had said when he pointed it out, _"They left some sheets, and we won't see it if we're sleeping now, will we?"_

* * *

_Rory was four when they moved into the town of Stars Hollow and out of the inn on the outskirts. The shed had been great because she didn't know it was a shed, but the house was even better. It needed painting and more furniture than they had, but the first thing her mom did was buy a bookshelf and screw it into the wall with the help of the tall man that lived in the small house next door with the even smaller lady. Sookie came over with a whole box full of books and held Rory in her arms as they decided if Alice in Wonderland should go next to Curious George or Famous Five. They decided on Famous Five because Curious George was her favorite at the moment and it had to be on the nightstand next to her pillow._

* * *

Liz doesn't look like a user, and got pretty good at hiding when she was using, which Jess knows attributed heavily to him never being taken into permanent care. Her clothes would scream 'hippy' at you anyway, so the fact that they never got ironed and were only washed once a week at the laundromat was never obvious. She had a bottle of perfume in her bag all the time and would spritz herself after every rollie, after every late-night booze session. 

And she respected herself.

That part had always surprised Jess, too. He never thought she did - the endless line of boyfriends with few breaks in between gave him the presumption that she was not only dependant on the drugs and the alcohol, but dependant on the men around her too. Some of them would bring drugs with them or knew a guy who would give them some practically free or would bring money for drugs and Liz would lead them there. A few of them were decent guys.

The first guy Jess had _really_ liked was Thomas. This was also the first time he met his Uncle Luke. 

Liz had picked up a job as a shot-girl at some night club in Hell's Kitchen. She hadn't wanted to risk CPS dropping by at night and finding Jess alone, so she would drag Jess along for her shifts and he would sit in the manager's office or behind the bar with the bartenders on the weekdays when the club was pretty quiet. Thomas was a bartender and was working on a master's degree at NYU. He was smart and would let Jess sit with him on his breaks and read his textbooks with him. Jess knew how to say the words pretty soon, even the long ones with loads of 'n's and 't's, he just didn't know what they meant. 

Eventually, Thomas started coming around the apartment too. He helped paint the living room and fixed the wonky kitchen table, which was cool, and pretty quickly he started leaving clothes at the apartment too. He took Jess to play basketball in the courtyard downstairs and would sit Jess on his shoulders when they went for groceries so that he could reach the top shelves. 

Thomas also brought his friends from NYU over too. They always looked dizzy and kind of stuck of old cigarettes but they brought him toys and things they found when they visited home, and soon enough his book and toy collection were growing. They wouldn't let him sit at the table when they and his mom would smoke and drink, but he was allowed to sit on Thomas's knee when they were done and laughing at nothing. 

Thomas got violent when he drunk. Never towards Jess or Liz, but he would throw things at his friends and they would all find it very funny. He threw the phone at his friend, Jake, and when it smashed to pieces against the wall they all cheered loudly and went looking for stuff to break in alleyways outside. Jess's mom told him that's just what people do when they drink, whooped, and went right after them. She was dragged upstairs two hours later by a guy in a flannel shirt and a backward baseball cap. She was still laughing when he tucked her into bed and put some water next to her. 

"Who are you?" Jess asked when they were in the kitchen. The man had fixed Jess a bowl of cereal, and he was sat at the table eating whilst the man bent to a knee and started picking up the broken pieces of what used to be the phone.

"Luke," Was all he had said. He played cars with Jess when Jess didn't want to sleep, let him use his leg as the highway and his arm as the dirt tracks; laughed and tickled him when Jess put his hat on his head and it slipped down to his mouth. Liz didn't like that he was there when she woke up. Started yelling and screaming for him to get out. Luke had started yelling too, mainly about responsibility and needing to be a better mom, which just confused Jess because his mom was _great, thanks very much_. 

Luke left and his mom slammed the door after his retreating back. They left that apartment that evening because Thomas wasn't allowed back, his mom had said. They slept in the car for a while. Jess's legs weren't long enough to be the highway, he thought, and it was awkward twisting his arm around himself to use his other as the dirt track.

* * *

_Rory's mom was fond of the diner in the middle of town, but Rory was always at daycare or with Mia when she went. When Rory's mom first took her to the diner, it was supposed to be closed. It was way too late at night for coffee, she tried to tell her mom, but her mom said that Luke needed help with something and it wouldn't take too long. That was the first time she had met Luke. He made her some hot cocoa and cereal, and he and her mom sat talking about something that she didn't pay attention to. He had a toy car in his pocket and Rory ran it across the floor of the diner, avoiding the red squares because they were traffic cones. She wasn't really a fan of toy cars, but they were cool enough, she thought. She wanted to ask to keep it, but whenever Luke looked at it his eyes would get upset and he smiled at her when she gave it back to him, so she thinks it's a good idea she gave it back anyway._

* * *

Jess never went to pre-school or daycare. His mom didn't like the idea of it, and they were always moving around New York anyway so it didn't make sense putting him in a new class every month or so. When he turned four, though, the lady from CPS told his mom that he had to go to kindergarten. 

Jess can't remember a lot of his first day, or most of that year, actually, but he does remember crying to his mom because he didn't want to go. The teaching assistant had to hold him back when they managed to pry him apart from her, and distracted him throughout the day with books and toy cars, which was pretty cool. 

What he does remember, vividly, was sitting with that same teaching assistant two hours after the other kids had already left. The front office staff kept trying to phone Liz but she didn't pick up, and they were just seconds away from phoning CPS - like his file said to do - when she stumbled her way through the front doors. He felt the teacher's grip on his shoulder tighten a little bit, because his mom was dizzy again and her boot wasn't laced she was stumbling, but he was already running towards her before they could get a proper good look. 

CPS knocked on the door a few hours later, right after his mom vomited all over the kitchen counter. Jess didn't like the way his mom yelled at the CPS lady or the way she tugged him into her chest. She got some sick on his shirt and a little bit in his hair, but she was too dizzy to wash it out. He cleaned her up that night, and two teaching assistants at kindergarten held him over a sink in the teacher's lounge to wash the sick out of his hair the next morning.

* * *

_For Rory's first day of kindergarten, her mom brought her a new outfit that was ironed and laid out ready for her. Her mom and Sookie both took pictures, and Luke even made her pancakes before the three of them walked Rory to Stars Hollow Elementary. Luke had muttered a bit about it but still smiled when Rory's mom insisted on a picture of those two as well. He picked her up, settled her on his hip, and the picture was taken right as Rory reached over to tickle under his chin and they were laughing. The picture was framed for Luke's birthday a few days later. He kept it right on top of the coffee machine and it was the only time he would happily talk to Taylor when he asked about it. When they redecorated years later, when Rory was at Chilton, the frame was moved upstairs so it wouldn't get broken, and it sat right next to a picture of a little boy practically swallowed by Luke's shirt and cap._

* * *

His mom never looked dizzy anymore these days and it was great. Jess didn't like when she looked dizzy because she always kind of smelt then, and she didn't act like his mom - she would laugh at jokes that weren't funny and get angry about spilling something, or cry at something that happened ages ago and would tell Jess to go to bed even if he hadn't had his dinner yet (she would always bring him food a little while later when she was less dizzy, so she was obviously just confused about the time, which Jess understands because telling the time is difficult and his teacher gets confused with times as well). She had sometimes not been dizzy for a few days, but this time it was for two weeks and it was amazing because she was _his mom_. 

They still slept in the car, but she found an apartment an hour away and a job right next to it, so they drove over. 

"Wait here, Jessie," She had said when they stopped at a block of apartments, "I'll just run this upstairs, and then we can go home. We'll play the dinner game, yeah?"

The dinner game was great, Jess thought because he always won. He was great at it. Whenever his mom would leave him the car, she'd think about what they would have for dinner that night, and when she got back he would have to guess what it was. If it was a difficult dinner to make, like fries, his mom wouldn't come back to the car for a while. His mom was gone for an hour - his teacher was telling them all about reading time at school and he was getting good at reading the time on the car radio - so he knew it was a difficult dinner that night. 

Except she was dizzy when she got back and didn't remember about the dinner game.

"Mom-"

"Shh, Jessie, Mommy's driving." The weird thing was, she hadn't started driving yet. She was still trying to pick the keys up off of the floor without dropping them. She smelt funny too.

"Mom, what were you doing up there?"

His mom finally got the keys into the car and the engine started. He liked the sound of that because that meant the radio would start and then the music would play. "We're going to a new house, Jessie, so we need to have some money for it, right? I was just selling some things we don't need anymore."

"What things?"

"Just some of Mommy's pills she doesn't like the taste of, that's all baby."

Jess had tried to tell her, five minutes later, that her eyes were closed and that was a lamp post they were heading for, but she didn't answer him and the hood of the car wrapped around the pole at sixty miles an hour. Jess was wearing his seatbelt, but the part of his seat that it clicked into was broken and snapped, so his chest collided with the dashboard and knocked the wind out of him. His arm hurt the most and he cried when the firefighter pulled him out of the car. The nurse at the hospital gave him some juice which let him fall asleep, and when he woke up he had a cast that would fix his elbow.

The lady from CPS was back. He heard her tell someone on the phone that _it happened again, car accident this time and he was there, Liz can't be trusted with a kid_. He asked her who Liz was. She told him it was his mom. The next time he saw he saw his mother - when the nurse led him into her room by the hand for a quick visit on the way back from the playroom - he tried calling her Liz and it sounded foreign in his mouth and he didn't like that it sounded better than calling her mom. She answered it, knew it was him talking, and suddenly Jess thought the name wasn't so foreign anymore and fit her a lot better than Mom did.

Jess was thirteen when he realized that the last time he called her mom, his exact words were _'mom, there's a lamp post there'_ which are shitty words anyway because she should have _known_ , should have _opened her eyes,_ shouldn't have been high and behind a wheel.

* * *

_Her first time at the beach, Rory spent the entire time creating a village of sandcastles and getting taught how to body surf by her mother. They eat ice cream on the very top of their car when it starts getting too dark, and on the drive back Rory falls asleep pressed against the window. Her mother had taken a picture of Rory among her sandcastle village and kept it tacked to the fridge with a magnet that they had glued a seashell to._

* * *

On Liz's 21st birthday, when Jess was just about to turn five, his Uncle Luke came back. Liz was on one of her trips and the lady that lived opposite them must have called Luke when she came to give Jess his dinner. That lady was also dizzy a lot, but much older than Liz and knew how to actually cook food that tasted the way it was supposed to.

"Hey, Uncle Luke."

"Hey, Kid. Want to take a drive?"

They drove out of New York but Jess fell asleep after that sign, only woke up again when Uncle Luke carried him out of the car and into a cabin. They had to share the bed because there was only one and no couch, but it was comfortable enough and Luke didn't complain when Jess would accidentally kick him in his sleep. They ate eggs and bacon for breakfast and then Luke took him for a walk through the woods. They ended up at a lake, and Jess played in the shallow water whilst Luke sat on a dock and fished. 

"Hey, Uncle Luke?"

"Yeah?"

"Are we having fish for dinner?"

"No, I don't like killing them, we'll throw them back if we catch anything." 

Liz would complain if Jess got her clothes wet after a bath; Luke just secured an arm around Jess when he clambered onto his lap to watch the fishing rod, soaking his jeans in the process. 

"Hey, Uncle Luke?"

"Mhm."

"Do I have to go back? To Liz?"

"Yeah, buddy."

"Why?"

"She's your mom." Jess hadn't fully grasped the concept of _how_ people say things, but he heard the sadness in Luke's voice and decided he didn't like it all that much.

Luke caught a pretty small fish and let Jess fling it back into the water. Jess posed for a picture by the water just before it got dark, Luke's cap slipping down his head and Luke's shirt practically swallowing him whole. When it came out of the bottom of the camera, Luke held it steady on the dock whilst Jess wrote his name on it. He carried Jess back to the cabin on his shoulders and Jess decided that his Uncle Luke is ten times better than Thomas.

* * *

_Rory's thirteenth birthday was a pretty big deal. She got balloons and cards and a huge cake that Sookie had spent three days decorating. Even Taylor held his tongue when she tested out her new rollerblades on his sidewalk and tipped over a basket of apples. When the diner got too busy to sing happy birthday in, Luke led the entire ensemble (Rory, her mother, Sookie, Lane, and even Mrs. Kim) up to his apartment and they stamped their feet and hands as Rory blew out her candles._

* * *

Jess didn't really know his exact birthday until the day before he turned fourteen - he knew the week, but Liz always seemed to remember a different date within a period of five days so it varied yearly. He only found out because the principle was showing him his student file, and it was stamped in clear letters right at the top. 

It had made him feel a little stupid, not knowing his own damn birthday, but he found that he hated knowing it now. Before, he never really knew and so couldn't get that mad about Liz forgetting. He knows now. He's too old to forget it again. It's an open invitation to add another reason onto the evergrowing list on Liz's mess-ups.

That year it fell on a Saturday. He spent it sitting out on the fire escape with a pile of books and a packet of cigarettes. 

He spent his fifteenth birthday the same way.

* * *

_Lane dragged her over to Hartford three days after her sixteenth birthday to check out the record store she'd found. Rory tried to entertain her friend's love for the kinds of music that Rory wasn't overly fond of, but when they got past the names of albums that Rory had listened to and enjoyed, it became apparent to the both of them that Lane might as well be speaking a completely different language. Despite this, Rory's happy to follow her friend blindly through the aisles with her nose in a book. They grab lunch at a pizza parlor a few blocks over and make up stories about the people walking past the window, laughing all the while._

* * *

Luke had left a voicemail on their machine telling him to keep safe and that he'll try and drive out to the city soon, but Jess hadn't held out too much hope.

Liz remembered Jess's seventeenth birthday on the actual day. She made an attempt which Jess had to credit her for - there was a card she managed to write a halfway decent message into, and a chocolate cake he didn't touch, as well as two books hastily wrapped in leftover Christmas paper he knows she got from the woman in the apartment downstairs. But she had drawn blood where she scratched too hard at her when she'd spent a few hours sober. Jess had heard her pick up the phone and he locked himself in his room for the rest of the day.

There were always moments like that, where Liz would act like a doting mother for an hour or two, and where Jess would let himself slacken a little bit and indulge; but it only made the brutal sense of reality all that much harder to face when Liz would phone up her fixes and they would crowd into the kitchen. He's stopped wishing for her to stay in that act for longer each time because it's always disappointing when he realizes that mistake. 

It's gotten easier to brush it off - which in turn makes it hurt even more. 

Now, Jess can remember there had been a girl four blocks over that was always eyeing him up whenever he bothered to go to school. She had kissed him once, in the middle of an empty gym when they ditched their third-period math class, and even gave him her address. He had climbed down the fire escape that night on his birthday and spent the night fooling around with her quietly enough that her parents wouldn't know she'd snuck him in. It wasn't the first time he'd slept with a girl just for a place to stay, and can't even say that was the _prime_ reason for sleeping with them. He'd always known them, had always waited until _they_ made the first move, and he fooled around with them because he _wanted_ to. They were alright girls and always stuck around for a few weeks - before they realized he was a helpless case and ditched him for someone else with the same inferior complex - and having a place to crash for a night that wasn't a subway carriage was just a bonus.

But Jess would be lying if he said that he hasn't assessed every girl he's met since he was fourteen on whether or not they would let him get away with it.

It sucks, a little, because he knows he's at that age now where girlfriends are supposed to be a _thing_. Jess kind of wants one. He can see the appeal in it. They're supposed to care about you enough to stick around, which is an experience Jess doesn't have a lot of, and you're supposed to care about them enough to _want_ to stick around, which is another thing Jess hasn't experienced as of yet. But it also means _talking_ \- about Liz, the apartment and the drugs on the kitchen counter, the fact he's not met his father and doesn't really want to, why he's so turned in on himself.

He's not ready for that leap of faith yet, because he knows he can't handle disappointing them or being disappointed by them.

There are friends dotted around the city from various school's Jess has been thrown out of that are always willing to lend him a couch and an extra set of blankets for the night, which is helpful when Jess doesn't feel like lying to a girl about his middle name or favorite color. The first time Jess had ditched Liz for the night he'd stayed at his friend's Henry's house under the pretense that they had a history project to work on and they didn't keep a track of the time. They were thirteen, it was plausible enough, and when Henry's parents handed Jess the phone to tell Liz he was out for the night, he phoned the guy two floors above their apartment to get him to relay the message if Liz happened to be home. 

Sometimes the girls and the friends couldn't have him for the night, though. Sometimes Jess just didn't want to go to them away. They were always happy, their homes were always _homes_ and it was depressing pretending like he was okay not having the same. The first time he'd slept rough, he was fifteen and accidentally fell asleep on the subway. He hadn't meant to, but when he woke up an hour later and realized he had missed his stop, he just rode the subway for the rest of the night. It became a habit then, whenever he needed, and no one batted an eye at the sixteen-year-old who knew the subway map like the back of his hand in the dark. 

* * *

_"When you move to college promise me you'll come home and still love me."_

_"I'll do you one better and promise you that right now."_

_Her mother smirks at her over a slice of pizza, and Rory can't help but smile right back at her._

* * *

“You can come visit?" It's a question when it shouldn't be and Jess scoffs at it without looking her way. 

Liz is stood in his doorway, watching anxiously as he shoves whatever his hands find into the bag. His room was a mess before he started packing, and he's pretty sure half of the clothes he's already packed away need to be thrown in the laundry before he can wear them again but he's more concerned with the fact that he was _right_ and it _hurts_. 

Liz depends on the people around her to fix her messes for her, and Jess had always known that at some point in time _he_ would be one of those messes. It was never a question or a gray area for them, it was just a matter of _when_. 

It only hurts hearing it now because he's so close to his eighteenth birthday, so close to being free from it all, and yet not close enough. It's nothing personal against Luke, and Jess can't even remember that time CPS dropped him off in Stars Hollow when he was six, but it hurts knowing that your own mother thinks you're too broken for her to fix. Luke comes over a lot to fix her mistakes, kick out anyone who overstays their welcome and has been too high to notice it, mends holes in the walls and replaces rusty pipes under the sink, built the wardrobe in Jess's room when he'd spent a week crashing on his friend's couch, washed Liz's hair when she couldn't shower without vomiting. She's sent him bills she can't pay, letters she doesn't know how to respond to, applications for loans he needs to sign as a referee.

Every mistake Liz makes is somehow linked to Stars Hollow, and this time she's shipping Jess off there. 

Because Jess has been kicked out of school again. Because he came back with a slap mark on his cheek from the last girl who wanted to get to know him and refused to accept he didn't want her knowing. Because Liz is trying to stay sober again (and they both know it won't last) and Jess won't support her in it or entertain the idea that this time will stick. Because Jess can't let anyone in or trust himself to keep his distance. Because Jess would rather stick his nose in a book than make small talk with the woman who made him. 

Because Liz has opened her eyes long enough to see that _this_ is the boy she's raised, and she's done a really crappy job with it. 

Jess has a _plan_. His birthday's in a few weeks and then he can go away. There's a car a few blocks down the road that some guy said he can sell to him for cheap, and then Jess is just going to drive. He can follow Kerouac's steps and then see where the roads take him after that, anything that will get him out of New York. 

But that all has to change now because Liz has handed him a bus ticket and Luke's supposed to meet him at the station in three hours. 

"Jessie-"

He leaves the front door with a slam. 

He takes a moment to sit on the stairs three floors down and bury his head in his hands. 

**Author's Note:**

> UK BASED HOTLINE NUMBERS: (for crises and emergencies, call 999 or 111 as normal);
> 
> Samaritans 116 123 (free from any phone, 24/7)
> 
> SANEline; mental health problem or support for someone else 0300 304 7000 (4.30pm-10.30pm every day)
> 
> Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM); if you identify as male; 0800 58 58 58 (5pm-midnight every day)
> 
> Families Anonymous; support services for families/friends of drug users; 020 7498 4680
> 
> Action on Addiction; abstinence-based treatment services for those with severe dependencies on alcohol and drugs (SW London and Liverpool); 0300 330 0659
> 
> Homeless link (StreetLink); if you're worried about someone sleeping rough; 0300 500 0914 (or through the StreetLink app for Apple and Andriod) - whoever submits will receive details of action taken; StreetLink will follow up in ten working days to the council to see what has happened as a result of the alert and provide you with an update.


End file.
